


A dusted World of rain

by ThoughtsOfDarc



Category: Barton Hollow - The Civil Wars (Song), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 19:03:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18349805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThoughtsOfDarc/pseuds/ThoughtsOfDarc
Summary: This is the first story i've written since my hiatus - I'm rusty, but i hope you like anyway.





	A dusted World of rain

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first story i've written since my hiatus - I'm rusty, but i hope you like anyway.

She ran as fast as she could. Her feet hitting the ground in rapid speed, leading her away from the men following her. Or so she hoped…

She could hear their footsteps getting closer and closer, and the sheer panic traveled up her spine. Her lungs burned as she desperately tried to breathe in and out, but her heart hammered so fast it felt like it stopped the air from entering. She tried to make her body obey with the sheer force of her mind, but her rapid, shallow breathing continued as she kept running.

The evening was dark and gloomy, hiding the city in dark skies and missing light in the streetlamps. The dark clouds that had been hanging over the city all day as a bad omen, had finally opened up and let the rain fall. It started as a drizzle, but soon it had become heavy rain that had lasted for hours. Though it no longer rained, the streets where wet and puddles where everywhere.

As she turned sharply around a corner her foot slipped, causing her to stumble and lose valuable seconds in her attempt of fleeing.

“Shit! Come on! Come on!” she paced herself to get up and keep on going. The tight grip she had on the hunting knife that once belonged to her brother turned her knuckles white. She knew it would do little to no good against the 3 large men chasing her down the street.

The knife had been her brother’s prized possession. He loved that knife even though they lived in the big city and had no use for a large knife like that. Their grandfather had given it to him when they were just kids and she still remembered the pang of jealousy she felt when all she got was a doll.

Her brother, a few years older than her, had taken care of the knife as if it was alive, especially after their grandfather died.

It had a special place on the wall, where one could see it from every corner of his room. He made sure to polish and care for both the knife and the sheath, which was why it was still in perfect condition all these years later. Even after they both left home and gotten their own places. The Knife had stayed in his old bedroom, on the wall where it belonged.

It had been there until the gruesome day it all happened. Both her and her brother had been home to celebrate their mother’s birthday and had been laughing of one of their fathers stupid jokes as he cut the birthday cake, when suddenly their mother had started to look pale and put a hand to her head as if she was dizzy. “Something’s wrong” the words had come out as a whisper, as fear was painted in her eyes. Both her dad and her brother had quickly grabbed her mother’s arms as to steady her, but only for a second. Her brother had stepped back as if he had been burned and looked confused down his body. Her father had looked at her, confused, scared “Y/N? What’s going on?”

And then they had started to vanish before her eyes. If it wasn’t for the fact that she knew, she knew, that she was with her family and was wide awake, she would have thought it to be a nightmare. No, it was a nightmare - A living nightmare.

Her family disappeared, turned into dust in front of her eyes. It happened so quickly that she only just reached her brother to grab his hand, their eyes met for a split second and then he was gone. They were all gone.

She had stood there in stunned silence, looking at the ash-like piles on the floor and on the chair. Everything had felt empty and silent until she realized it wasn’t. In a flash sound came back to her, bombarding her with screams from people outside. Screams of fear and sorrow.

She had run to the window and looked out, just to see more people vanish up in thin air. It felt like forever, but it had only taken a few seconds before the world seemed empty and a strange silence fell. The people that had been with loved ones or just witnessed people before them disappear stood still, looking around without saying a word.

Nobody understood what had happened.

That was months ago, and that was the beginning of the reason to why she was now running for her dear life from 3 unknown men.

Very quickly the half empty world had become a fight zone. You had to be able to fight for your life if you wanted to survive. With all of the vanished people, had also vanished knowledge to get things working. Sure, there were still people left who knew how to make food, get the factories running, repair broken things, but it wasn’t easy when they were missing half of the people that were needed to make it all work.

People quickly started to hoard food, clothes and other goods to survive, while they waited for someone or something to get the world back on track… It never happened though.

Instead started a fight, a hunt, for keeping yourself alive.

She had quickly run out of food in her parents’ house, and knew she had to go out in the city to find some, or find people who would be willing to help.

At the last round of the house to see if she there was anything she needed to bring, she had spotted her brothers knife and with a promise into the air of bringing it back, she took it as the only weapon she had to defend herself.

She had been searching a store for something, anything really, that she could eat. It had looked empty and ransacked, but just before she had given up, she had spotted a silvery shine underneath a tipped over shelf. By further exception, she had found 3 cans of chili beans. They were pretty banged up, but they were whole and that meant food.

Smiling while she put the cans into her saddleback, she hadn’t noticed the 3 burly guys outside the store when she exited.

“What do you have in the bag, Lady?” One of the men had asked, to which she had replied it was hers. She was the one who had found it. The men hadn’t backed off, on the contrary, they had just gotten closer. She had tried to reason with them, but to no avail and she had quickly found it best to just give them the cans. She didn’t care for the look in their eyes, and 3 cans of beans wasn’t worth it. She’d find something elsewhere she told herself.

But even after she had thrown her saddleback with the cans to the guy in front, they hadn’t backed off. The look in their eyes hadn’t changed one bit, and she had realized too late that it hadn’t been the cans of beans they where after.

One of them had grabbed her arm so tight it surely must have left bruises. He had tried to drag her closer, but she had been thinking fast and had grabbed her brother’s knife that was placed in her belt. She had cut the man. Not bad, but bad enough for him to let her go and then she had started to run.

If there had been any small chance that they would have left her alive when they were done with her, it was gone now that she cut one of them.

The way they chased her down the street with murder in their eyes said it all.

“Come on, come on, come on!” She chanted inside her head, urging herself to move faster. Her lungs burned so bad now, it felt like they would explode any second and the corner of her eyes had started to blur from the amount of adrenaline that rushed through her body.

She turned another corner, this time without slipping. Not that it mattered anything.

She came to an abrupt stop, when she realized she had gotten into a dead end. She was facing a wall, too high to jump, closing in the back alley. “No!” she whispered as she felt the tears sting in her eyes.

Only seconds later, she heard 3 sets of footsteps catch up and stops only a few meters from where she stood. She closed her eyes slowly, taking a deep, much needed, breath before she opened them again and turned around.

The men were heaving for air just like she was. One of them hunched over, resting his hands on his knees as he tried to calm his breath. He watched her closely with a scary glint of evil satisfaction shining in his eyes. “Why are you running? We just wanna talk Lady. Don’t you wanna talk with us?” The guy in front asked, causing his hunched over friend to laugh.

Heavy raindrops started to fall again, and within seconds it was pouring down, drenching them all.

“No, fuck off! Leave me alone… I gave you the cans!” Her voice was raw and scratchy from the panicked sprint she just did, almost disappearing in the sound of the heavy rain. Raising the knife, she hoped it would scare them enough to back off.

“You did, and I thank you for that. It’ll make a great meal for us afterwards, but first you got something else I want” stepping closer slowly as a predator, he eyed up the knife in her hand.

“Go away!” half begging, half demanding, she shouted at the men. Stepping back further for every step the man took towards her, until she felt the brick wall in her back. She was trapped.

All 3 men was now fully upright, getting closer, caging her in. Cursing herself for getting herself trapped like this, she looked franticly from side to side, hoping to find a way out of this mess.

She didn’t find it though, it found her.

“Leave… Now!” The voice was low and demanding. Chilling but strangely comforting in her ears.

All 3 men quickly turned around to see who interrupted their hunt, and while doing so the man right in front of her took a step to the side, leaving enough room for her to look between the men and towards the place where the voice came from.

At first she didn’t see anything. The alley was dark and the missing streetlamps and moonlight didn’t help. But then she saw him. In the darkness a hooded figure was standing. He wasn’t facing them, but stood sideways with his head down causing the water to fall from the hood.

“Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” One of the other men asked the hooded figure “Fuck off!”

He took a few steps towards the new stranger, but the man didn’t move an inch.

“What the hell is this?” the guy turned to his friends, gesturing towards the unknown man and they too moved closer. It seemed like she was forgotten for now and she took the chance to move to the corner and hide partly behind some crates and tarp, thrown up against the wall.

“Leave! I only say this once. Leave now and I won’t hurt you” The hooded man still stood sideways to the 3 men, but his arm moved slowly to his side.

“Yo Little Red Riding hood, you do know that you’re out numbered, right? 3 to 1 isn’t in your favor, so maybe you’re the one who should just leave us and the lady alone. You leave now, and we are the ones who won’t hurt you” As the man spoke, his one friend picked up 2 iron bars from the ground and gave one of them to him. The last man armed himself with a piece of wood with nails poking out of it,

She hid her face in her arms, making herself as small as possible. They were right, they were 3 and the stranger was only one man. Even if she got up and attacked from behind, the chance of getting out of this was nonexistent. But on the other hand, she couldn’t let the hooded man go down trying to help her, without doing anything herself. What kind of person would she be if she let another person get hurt, or worse, get killed because of her?

While her inner debate was running, she faintly heard one of her attackers yell “NOW!” in what she imagined must have been the sign to attack. In the back of her head, she registered a strange whoosh sound, like metal sliding against metal.

There were shouting and grunting and the sound of fight filled the air. “What the hell!”, “Fuck you!”, “Get him!”

She heard the men fight, and in her head she saw the hooded man fall to the ground while kicks and hits rained down over him. She thought she heard the sound of the iron bars hit a body and though she dreaded for her live, she couldn’t stay back and do nothing.

Clenching her eyes, wishing herself away from here, she took a deep breath and stood up fast, stepping out from her hiding spot with the knife ready for attack.

But she stopped. Her eyes searched the ground while her mouth was slightly open, as if she was about to say something, but there were no words.

The hooded man was standing with his back to her, a sword in his hand rested the tip on the chest of one of her attackers who lay motionless on the ground. The two other men were also lying on the ground without moving and instinctly, she knew they never would again.

He lifted his sword and put the back edge on the inside of his arm, dragging it in one fluid motion to wipe away the blood. He let both arms fall to his side, still holding the sword in one. He stood like that for a second before he raised his free hand to his hood and pushed it back, revealing the back of his head. Her heart hammered wild in her chest as she watched him remove the fabric that covered his face.

She stared wide eyed at the man standing there with his back to her. Watching his hair, cut into a Mohawk-like style, get drenched in the rain within seconds.

He slowly turned and looked over his shoulder, a scowl on his face as if he hated everything he just had to do. But his eyes softened when they caught her scared looking ones.

 

“Are you okay? Did they hurt you?” the words seemed so far away, and it took her a minute before she realized he was talking to her.

“No, I’m fine… I think” she looked down her body, examining herself before looking back up “Thank you. I- I’m… Thank you”

He looked her over, making sure she wasn’t bleeding or in other visible way before he gave the 3 dead men a last glance as he sheathed his sword. He looked back at the woman he just rescued meeting her eyes once more. He held her gaze for a few seconds and then nodded once, the raindrops falling from his face. A mix between a ‘You’re welcome’ and 'Goodbye’ before he turned around and started walking out the alley.

She stood in silence for a while and watched him leave, before looking at the 3 men to locate her saddleback. Quickly she picked it off the dead body and swung it over her head as she started to run the same way the man with the hood had just went.

Out on the street she looked both ways, finding it hard to see in the sparse light and heavy rain. But further ahead she saw the silhouette of the dark figure walk down the street.

“Wait! Hey, wait up!” She called out, as she jogged towards him. He stopped and turned, waiting as she caught up to him.

He watched the woman in front of her, drenched, cold and alone. But he saw something in her eyes, a spark, a will to live in this broken world and an old feeling stirred inside him. He once knew someone who had that same look in her eyes, a fighter who refused to give up, someone who had overcome hurdles in life that seemed impossible to everybody but her, one he was once sent to kill, but instead he made a different call. A call that gave him a best friend and partner for life. Yeah, he recognized a look like that.

“So…” She started as she tried to wipe away the rain that just kept falling “I was wondering if you knew of a good place to cook some cans of beans. If you are hungry that is?”

He couldn’t help the twitch at the side of his lips, threaten to break into a smile, as he watched her stand there with a can of beans in her hands and a raised eyebrow silently asking him to take her with him.

He shook his head with a low chuckle “Sure, I know a place. Come on…”


End file.
